


Falling Together and Apart in Five Acts

by Hamimifk (BatchSan)



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Arguing, Attempted Violence, Break Up, Community: dysfuncentine, F/F, Failed Relationship, Femslash, Sexual Content, Story Told Backwards, Verbal Abuse (strongly implied), implied alcoholism
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-03-07
Updated: 2013-03-07
Packaged: 2017-12-04 13:24:40
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,544
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/711229
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BatchSan/pseuds/Hamimifk
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Love is a fickle, confusing beast.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Falling Together and Apart in Five Acts

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the prompt: _Story of a failed relationship, told backwards_ @ [Dysfuncentine](dysfuncentine.livejournal.com)

A candle goes out and Hermione sighs, pulling her legs closer to herself, not shifting the sweater she’s been hugging away from the side of her face. She’s pathetic, she thinks, and couldn’t care less.

The phone rings—once, twice, on and on until it finally goes silent. With a quick flick of her wand, she turns on the answering machine.

She should be happy, but happiness seems like a thing she’ll never feel ever again.

Hermione continues to stare out the window, ignoring the boxes lined up neatly beneath it, and sighs when the phone rings again. Three rings later, the answering machine picks up a voice that makes Hermione bury her face into the sweater. She tries to find comfort in the scent left behind on the material as the answering machine records a simple message.

_”I’m sending a house elf for my things. And… And I’m sorry.”_

*

Turns out that Ginny was right.

They get into a huge tiff five months into the relationship. 

The day starts off okay. Hermione’s not even hungover today, though whether that’s because she’s begun to develop a tolerance for the alcohol she’s been downing nearly every day or what is hard to pinpoint. Either way, she’s in a good mood that day and kisses Pansy at the kitchen table, getting jam on the sleeve of her pajama shirt. They go about their respected errands for the day and come home more or less at the same time.

Only, Pansy’s drunk this time around, and she’s not a pleasant drunk like Hermione somehow manages to be. She’s more than a little belligerent and loose with her tongue in ways that would scandalize most. Today she grabs a handful of Hermione’s hair, yanks her hair back and purrs into her ear, ‘How’s my pretty mudblood doing today?’

Swatting the hand away, Hermione goes back to stirring the pot of soup on the stovetop. Pansy sits at the kitchen table, or rather, sits atop of the table, and begins to rant about the goddamn mudbloods polluting the air she breathes every day. Sighing, Hermione sets the spoon in her hand down and grabs a glass to fill with water. Pansy’s going off about some pigeons that were pecking too loudly when Hermione attempts to hand her the glass now filled with water.

“Are you trying to poison me because I spoke ill of your beloved muggle friends?” Pansy asks, eyeing the contents of the glass in drunken suspicion.

“Honestly?” Hermione scoffs and goes back to the pot of soup. “If I were going to kill you, I’d be a little more creative than poisoning your water.”

“So you admit you’ve been trying to kill me?”

“What? No!”

“After all I’ve sacrificed to be with you and you have the audacity to attempt to do me off?” Pansy’s voice rises as she speaks. “What the Merlin was I thinking when I thought shagging you would be worth be laughed at by my friends?”

Hermione bristles and slams the spoon down, glaring at the other woman. She knows Pansy is just being a lousy drunk, but her head is beginning to ache from the inane accusations and it’s hard to not want to fight with her.

“Well maybe you should go shag all of your bleeding friends and leave me alone like you should’ve done that night at the club!”

The glass goes sailing by her head, smashing on the wall above the stovetop, and exploding into a torrent of glass. Hermione has just enough presence of mind to shut off the flame beneath the now ruined soup before she turns around and marches over to Pansy. Gripping the front of her shirt, she yanks the other woman off the table and glares hard at her.

“You wrench,” Hermione growls between gritted teeth, “I’ve had absolutely enough of you and your constant bitching. I say it’s high time to get off your high horse and take a look at the miserable human you are. Also, get out of my apartment right now. I never want to see your intolerable face again!”

Pansy stumbles back and hits a chair from the force of the push Hermione gives her. She opens her mouth, attempts several times to say something, but eventually decides not to. She drops her apartment keys on the table and apparates out of the apartment without a drunken word.

Hermione screams at the empty apartment.

*

The din in the restaurant is piercing to the hangover in her mind. She grimaces and digs out an ice cube from her glass of water and presses it to her forehead in hopes of numbing some of the pain away, no matter how pointless the act obviously is.

“This relationship you’re in is toxic for your health, ‘Mione.” Ginny presses the same glass of water to the side of Hermione’s face, drawing a grateful sigh from her. “This is the fifth time you’ve had a hangover this week and it’s only Wednesday.”

“Drinking makes Pansy’s incessant raving at nights more tolerable.”

“What does she rave about?”

“Everything! My apartment is too small. I didn’t wash her clothes right. Dinner is too cold or hot, or bland. Ugh, Gin, she’s driving me bonkers!”

“Well maybe you should break-up with her?” Ginny suggested, settling the glass back on the table.

“I don’t think it’s for such a drastic idea.”

“Perhaps not, but you have to admit that things are nearing a volatile cusp. Either you’re going to become an alcoholic or you two are going to get into one hell of a tiff and who knows how that might go down.”

Hermione sighs and leans her head on her friend’s shoulder, wondering where everything went so wrong.

*

It’s barely been a month since they hooked up at a nightclub and there Pansy is carrying her final box of belongings past Hermione into the latter’s apartment. Hermione has long since given up trying to make heads or tails of how wrong this all seems and feels, but she’s determined to prove this can work. Even though she’s not really sure what this ‘experiment’ would prove to anyone.

“This would have been easier had I been allowed to use magic,” Pansy complains, stretching her back.

“I’m quite aware,” Hermione says, stretching her own back. “But this is a muggle building and none of my neighbours would have taken lightly to boxes floating up the stairs.”

“Yeah, yeah…” Pansy sighs and pulls open the box with her wand, relieved to have the familiar weight in her hand once again. 

For a few moments they work to unpack Pansy’s things from boxes but eventually Hermione finds herself pinned to the couch with Pansy’s lips against hers and a hand up her skirt. She groans against the other woman’s lips and shifts her legs to allow for better access. Her hands grope blindly between them. Finding the zipper to Pansy’s slacks, Hermione wiggles her hand beneath expensive material and giggles when Pansy hisses against her lips.

In the throes of pleasure, Hermione swears she hears Pansy whisper three sacred words against her neck. For a moment she believes Pansy has just etched them into her flesh, but the moment passes and she’s clenching around Pansy’s fingers. 

They both fail to acknowledge that fleeting moment.

*

“I don’t like you and you don’t like me, but the rest of these buggers are boring and I’m blessedly drunken enough not to care that we hate each other, so let’s go somewhere and do something, yeah?”

Hermione blinks, once, slowly. The club is hot and she brushes her hair out of her face, grimacing slightly at the sheen of sweat on her brow. Surely she’s lost her marbles because is that Pansy Parkinson standing before and asking her out? The bartender must have slipped something into her drink, surely.

Fingers touch her cheek, hot and sticky with alcohol from a spilled drink, and that is most definitely not a figment of her imagination. 

“Who would’ve ever thought Parkinson possible of stooping to sloppy, drunken make-outs with a mudblood?” Hermione laughs because the situation seems so blatantly absurd. 

“You should be honored I even deigned to consider allowing your filthy lips against mine,” Pansy sneers, eyes hazy.

“What have you been drinking, because it’s clearly the strongest drink ever concocted and I’d like to know what to steer clear of in the future to prevent ever ending up in your shoes.”

“You throw all these pretty words around but I’ve yet to hear a decline to my offer.”

Pansy’s too smug when Hermione gets to her feet and pushes past her, grabbing her hand in the process. Hermione may have paid more mind to it had she not been tipsy enough to feel the room spin as she moved through it. They hit cold, night air with a small gasp and enter a nearby alley without further prompting. 

Hermione makes sure to wipe all the smug from Pansy’s face that night with her lips and fingers. It’s a mistake, of course. She’s sober enough to recognize as much.

It’s not like they’re ever going to fall in love or something stupid like that, so what harm could come of this one night of mistake making?


End file.
